AKRON, Ohio — Before the November presidential election, Ohio’s secretary of state and attorney general announced investigations into potential voter fraud that included people suspected of casting ballots even though they were not U.S. citizens.

It coincided with a national Republican messaging strategy warning that potentially thousands of ineligible voters would be voting.

“The right to vote is sacred,” Attorney General Dave Yost, a Republican, said in a statement at the time. “If you’re not a U.S. citizen, it’s illegal to vote — whether you thought you were allowed to or not. You will be held accountable.”

In the end, their efforts led to just a handful of cases. Of the 621 criminal referrals for voter fraud that Secretary of State Frank LaRose sent to the attorney general, prosecutors have secured indictments against nine people for voting as noncitizens over the span of 10 years — and one was later found to have died. That total is a tiny fraction of Ohio’s 8 million registered voters and the tens of millions of ballots cast during that period.

The outcome and the stories of some of those now facing charges illustrate the gap — both in Ohio and across the United States — between the rhetoric about noncitizen voting and the reality: It’s rare, is caught and prosecuted when it does happen and does not occur as part of a coordinated scheme to throw elections.

Nicholas Fontaine, a 32-year-old precision sheet metal worker from Akron, was indicted in October on one count of illegal voting, a fourth-degree felony.

Fontaine is a Canadian-born permanent resident who moved to the U.S. with his mother and sister when he was 2 years old. He is facing a possible jail term and deportation on allegations that he voted in the 2016 and 2018 elections.

He recalls being a college student when he was approached on the street about registering to vote.

“I think in my young teenage brain, I thought, ‘Well, I have to sign up for the draft, I should be able to vote,’” Fontaine said in an interview.

Permanent residents such as Fontaine are just one of several categories of immigrants who must register for a potential military draft through the Selective Service but who cannot legally vote.

The narrative of widespread numbers of immigrants without the necessary legal documents registering to vote and then voting is simply not backed up by the facts, said Jay Young, senior director of the Voting and Democracy Program for Common Cause.

State voter rolls are cleaned regularly, he said, and the penalties for casting an illegal ballot as a noncitizen are severe: fines, the potential for a prison sentence and deportation.

He said the role of such immigrants and their potential to sway the election “was the most enduring false narrative that we saw throughout this election.” But he also said it served a purpose, to keep the country divided and sow distrust in the election system.